Blizzcon Casualties, part 1

A little late, I know, but I’m finally recovered enough from Blizzcon to write about it. No, no, I wasn’t the guy who scrapped his leg dancing on stage. I do, however have a sexy blister on my toe (warning! gross picture!) from walking to Santa Ana from my hotel in new shoes. The sucker’s almost bigger than my toe itself! And a combination of not handling sleep deprivation well and school not giving me two minutes to myself makes for a very cranky pally.

Don’t let my whining mislead you, though. I had a blast at Blizzcon.

Blizzcon Itself

I see a lot of complaining about Blizzcon. Mainly from people who were watching it on livestream. Understandably: they got all the boring parts of Blizzcon with none of the perks.

The Blizzcon LFD DPS Queue

I wasn’t expecting to make it to any of the panels since I didn’t bother buying a ticket, so when my guildie had to go home in a hurry, I was thankful that he gave me his pass. As a result, I got to attend all of Saturday’s events.

I don’t care about news or fancy announcements, so I wasn’t looking for anything exciting. I loved the cinematics presentation. I was on the edge of my seat, squealing the whole time. I don’t know much about graphics and game design, so most of the theoretical stuff was over my head. I didn’t care: it looked super cool so I loved it. When I got home, I described it to my friends like this:

“So I went to this gaming company convention and they showed us the cinematics of this new game they have coming out and there was a dragon destroying the world and they showed us how he’s tearing up cities and making fire in the sky and causing huge waves. Before, in games, they used particles to design water, but the effects in this game were too big so they needed too many particles so they had to do it differently so they showed us how they did it and they used tons of layers and OMG it was so cool.”

I’ve been receiving a lot of “that’s nice, dear” looks.

Class Q&A didn’t really teach me anything. Some of the questions were either too obscure for my pally-only mind, for the others, the developers gave vague, generic answers that didn’t bring anything new to the table. I get the impression that Q&A sessions are only held to give players the illusion that they, as individuals, are being listened to.

That said, I would have loved to ask about the fate of paladin utility spells (our Hand abilities mostly) and why they’re not being spotlighted as much as they could be. I thought of it too late, though, and besides, I’m probably the only paladin crazy about utility spells, so I would have probably been booed away.

Oh, and the girl who went on about how dps should never take damage in a raid gave me a good laugh. Has she raided ICC? Sindragosa? Blood Queen? Clearly, she must be one of those dps who don’t ever look at their health bar. And it’s exactly dps like her who need damage reduction talents. (Her original question was concerning the need to pick pvp talents when moving down a tree.)

The Diablo Q&A needed better question screening. Will there be separate PVE and PVP specs? Oh, gee, I dunno, the developers only said no THREE TIMES.

My experience with Diablo is limited to having played for 15 minutes in the “old game demo” section of Blizzcon, so I was a little lost during the Q&A, but I’m excited to see how their non-competitive approach to the game will turn out.

I ended the day by watching most of the Starcraft II finals. I was curious as to what a pro game of Starcraft looks like. The speed and precision of those guys are incredible. How they manage to control 9 groups of units while using all of their buildings to make new units and expanding their bases to other mineral locations, I’ll never understand. In the time it takes me to build a couple of SCVs, they’ve each already established Command Centers at three different mineral fields and unleashed their army on the enemy. Twice.

I wonder if those kinds of skills translate to other aspects of life.

My favourite part of my day at Blizzcon though?

Riding in the Starcraft II flippy-thingy.

Oh yeah.

Notice how I’m there with a stranger. Two of my guildies, big tough guys, were with me, but chose purse-holding duties over riding in the flippy-thingy. Seriously!

7 Comments on “Blizzcon Casualties, part 1”

This sounds like so so much fun! The odds of me ever getting to a Blizzcon are really slim due to the price and hassle of getting there from Europe (not to mention the US visa I’m not very likely to get), but now I *really* want a guild meet! All my previous meetings with “internet people” were extremely cool, so I hope we can get the guild together and have as much fun as you did with yours :)

Ugg, yeah, totally not worth the hassle of getting a visa just for a weekend. Although, if you were to visit the US longer on a vacation, is it really that hard for an Eastern European to get a tourist visa?

I haven’t tried, so this is just hearsay (probably half true, but somewhat exaggerated): in the eyes of the visa clerks, young woman wanting to go to the States = young woman wanting to marry an American and stay there.

Apparently the American government doesn’t like that idea, so you can get your visa application rejected simply for being young. You have more chances if you’re married (I’m not), own a house (I don’t) and have a good job (at least I have that). The problem isn’t so much getting denied… it’s the fact that you have to pay $130 just to apply and you don’t get the money back.

I *am* planning a trip to the States next year, but I’m (hopefully) going for a friend’s wedding in July, so… still no Blizzcon :P